Somerville tightens enforcement of condo conversions

Thursday

Apr 14, 2016 at 7:20 AM

Dan Atkinson Somerville Journal

After years of not enforcing a law requiring a year’s notice to tenants before converting property to condos, the city’s Condominium Review Board will be requiring that notice from applicants going forward.

But attorneys and developers say that provision will delay their ability to develop and puts too much responsibility on them to make sure tenants aren’t being ousted by property owners eager to sell, with one prominent attorney telling the board the local law could violate state law.

The dispute shows that the current 30-year-old law is out of date and needs to be updated to better protect tenants and regulate development, according to one alderman.

“This thing is so confusing and unclear as it is, it’s just going to be a recipe for continued discontent and disagreement,” Ward 5 Alderman Mark Niedergang told the Journal.

A year’s notice

To convert a building to condominiums and remove rental units from the market, a property owner has to submit an application to the Condo Review Board. City law requires applicants to submit a master deed – the document outlining condo rules and property breakdowns -- that has been filed with the state registry of deeds to the board.

But before the owner submits the master deed to the review board, city law requires him to give a year’s notice to tenants in the building, or two years notice for tenants who are elderly or disabled. A neighbor of a proposed condo conversion complained to the board in December 2015 that such yearly notice had not been given out, and city housing director Michael Feloney said the board would “refine” its practices after consulting with city attorneys during its January meeting.

At the board’s April 11 meeting, assistant city solicitor David Shapiro said the existing law was “defendable” and needed to be enforced. Applicants who have previously been approved will be grandfathered in, according to sustainable neighborhoods coordinator Alex Bob, but pending applicants will have send notice to all tenants or previous tenants over the past year for their consent, or make a good faith effort to find previous tenants. And all applicants after April will be required to provide a year’s notice before board approval.

At the April 11 meeting, attorney Richard DiGirolamo protested the law, saying it violated provisions barring rent control and overly regulated a form of property ownership. DiGirolamo frequently represents people looking to convert condos and owns property in Somerville.

“A condominium is nothing more than a form of ownership, I can choose to own a condo, a three-family house or a 12-unit building and there’s nothing Somerville can do about it,” DiGirolamo told the board. “This is not the path you want to go down, it violates every law on the books.”

Yes, vacancies

And Digirolamo and other attorneys at the meeting pushed back specifically on providing a year’s notice for converting vacant buildings. Bob said the board will require applicants attempting to convert a vacant property to give notice for a year while making a “good faith” effort to find the previous tenants to see if they had been improperly evicted. If the tenants can’t be found, applicants would sign an affidavit saying so.

Charlestown real estate attorney Tony Troiano said the requirement was an “undue burden” for people buying property they intend to convert to condos, and most sellers would likely refuse to pass on tenant information. Bob said asking a seller would constitute that good faith effort even if the query was met with refusal.

In the past, applicants have bought “vacant” properties that were only recently vacated in order to get around the one-year notice requirement, Bob said. With no tenants in the building, there was no one to send notice to. Bob said officials will post on the city’s website to alert previous tenants of buildings with pending condo conversion applications that they can inform the review board if they think their rights were violated.

At the meeting, Condo Review Board member Marlene Smithers said a tenant came to the board in the past year saying she had been offered money by a person buying her building to leave in order for the building to be vacant for condos, and Niedergang said he had heard similar accounts from housing advocates.

“I’ve heard many stories of tenants forced out of their homes illegally and then [the new owners] building condos,” Niedergang said at the meeting. “I think this is quite routine, it’s happening in Somerville.”

After the meeting, Niedergang told the Journal he thought the stricter enforcement of the law was reasonable, and did not think it violated any rent control provisions. But there would be a difficult period of transition because of the lack of enforcement in the past, he said.

But the city needs to do a better job of enforcing development regulations in general, he said. While people following condo review procedure now have more regulations to contend with, people violating the laws will still continue to violate them.

Niedergang said he was open to changing the requirement of a year’s notice for converting vacant properties, but that should come with a complete overhaul of condo law. Officials created a task force to examine revising the law in 2007 but no changes were made.

“If one year is too much, let’s discuss it and change it,” Niedergang told the Journal. “Let’s hear what developers and attorneys have to say rather than just enforcing something that’s 30 years old. That to me is the only real solution, otherwise we’ll just be struggling indefinitely.”